Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Will Face Recall Election [Updated]

The Wisconsin Government Accountability board voted 5-0 to officially order a recall election for Governor Scott Walker after 900,000 people signed a petition calling for the recall. Out of that tally, Wisconsin conservatives were surprised to find only five fake names signed in the petition: Adolf Hitler, Mick E. Mous, Donald L. Duck, Fungky Van Den Elzen, and I Love Scott Walker Thanks (you’re welcome?). Update: Fungky Van Den Elzen is an actual humanbeing.

Update 2: A Wisconsin federal court has struck down sections of Walker’s law limiting collective bargaining rights. A lawsuit was filed by a coalition of unions last summer. Most of the law remains intact – at least until the recall inJune.

There are at least three Democrats, including Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010, have confirmed that they will run. A Democratic primary, if necessary, if will he held on May 8th, and the recall vote will be June5th.

Walker painted the recall as a golden opportunity at a press conference thismorning:

“It gives us a great opportunity to tell our story, to tell that we’re turning things around, how we’re heading in the right direction, how we’re moving Wisconsin forward. But we’ve got a lot more todo.”

The embattled Wisconsin Governor has faced a tirade of criticism after passing a law that essentially ends collective bargaining in the historically pro-union state.

#BREAKING: I’m told the entire @BPDAlerts Emergency Response Team has resigned from the team, a total of 57 officers, as a show of support for the officers who are suspended without pay after shoving Martin Gugino, 75. They are still employed, but no longer on ERT. @news4buffalo

In case you were wondering about the unmarked federal agents dotting Washington

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily armed riot police around Washington, D.C., in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or names badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such heavily armed, military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cos-playing as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied western Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).